Dear Scouting Family,

My thanks to those members who gave up their time to join in the Virtual Lekgotla last Saturday. The meeting was held on Zoom, with a combination of virtual breakout rooms for people who were joining from home and small group face to face meetings in some regions to allow access to those unable to join from home.

We started the meeting with a snapshot of the State of Scouting and a summary of the activities over the past three years since the last Lekgotla.  We gave a special focus to the activities under Covid that so many of our Groups and Crews supported and contributed to.

We then moved to a discussion on the shortage of adult leaders, the recruitment and development of these members and what the members’ experience showed had worked or not worked.  This discussion also looked at how we handle the transition of our youth members to adult volunteers and gather input on what we can be doing better.  This discussion is core to how we work to recruit and retain our volunteers and enable them to achieve their fullest potential, both inside and outside of Scouting.

We then proceeded to a discussion of the National and Summarised Regional Budgets, highlighting the critical shortfalls and urgent need for fundraising to support the ongoing activities of the movement across the country.  We also discussed various options of external funding streams that could assist in addressing the shortfalls that we have seen developing over the COVID period.  The meeting had some great ideas and input into the 5-year transition model and fundraising space that we will be working on integrating into our strategy moving forward.

The main part of the meeting addressed reviewing the national and regional activities against the strategic goals agreed to at the last Lekgotla.  In these sessions, each of the 6 goals was reviewed and suggestions made on what goal objectives should be expanded or had been completed and could be removed, or which needed to be added.  It was soon clear that fully resolving some of the issues required more time than we had in the meeting, and we will be working on setting up opportunities for those further and more focused engagements with the members on specific action areas.  So if you missed Lekgotla but still want to be part of the solution, watch out for the announcement of those meetings and discussions!

The meeting then was allowed an opportunity to help identify additional challenges outside of the defined goals, and the greatest successes of the past three years.

The meeting closed with the members observing a minutes silence for those lost to Covid and other causes over the past three years and then reaffirming their Scout Promise.

Over the coming weeks, we will be consolidating the feedback from the meeting and working with the RC’s and Regional teams on finalising a strategy for the next year.  All of the presentations and a summary of the feedback from the meeting will be made available to our members via the National website.

Thank you again to the team who worked on putting the event together and to the facilitators for their critical role in helping us to hear the voice of the members in defining the path forward.  Also a big thank you to you all for giving up a large chunk of your day to give us your input and ideas.

Yours in Scouting,

Brendon
Chief Scout

#scoutssouthafrica #VirtualLekgotla2021 #YourVoiceMatters